The Mirror
by VioletLink7
Summary: Adopted from sapphireswimming! Danny exhausts every excuse trying to stay out of the lab, but Jack drags him downstairs anyway. The real trouble starts once they get there.


Yay! A writer's block-curing oneshot! Huuuuuge thanks to the awesome sapphireswimming for letting me use her idea! I tried to stay true to the original (because I love her work) in the first part of the fic while also making it my own. I hope she likes what I've done! Got a little carried away at the end (this is what happens when I write on April Fool's). I seem to be able to write again so hurray for that! I've been writing in my plot bunny notebook all week but haven't actually been able to write since my road trip... Anyway, enjoy and Please review!

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom!

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**The Mirror**

_BOOM!_

Danny groaned and closed his textbook in annoyance. How could he study with the racket coming from downstairs? And his parents wondered why he never finished his homework…

Every time he was actually able to study—when he wasn't off fighting some ghost who wanted to take over the world (again)—his parents made it near impossible. They were always dragging him into one of their experiments or blowing one up; sometimes both at once.

Danny had to wonder how Jazz ever managed to make perfect grades while living in this house. He flopped onto his bed tiredly; _maybe I'll just get some sleep…_

"Danny!" the yell came from downstairs. He groaned again and buried his face in his pillow. He could practically feel his father's excitement even from the second floor. That was never good.

Jack would want to drag his son down to the basement so he could begin a long-winded explanation of his latest invention. Then demonstrate it. Even for humans, being near Jack with a new "toy" could prove deadly. For the ecto-infused Danny, it was so much worse.

Jack never seemed to tire of dragging the poor boy to the basement lab to share in his joy over a new button or feature to a new gizmo or whatever it was he was working on. He seemed to forget just how badly every demonstration went around Danny. Even when his machines always reacted to his son for some inexplicable reason until alarms were blaring or Danny was covered in green goop.

Every time, he explained to his increasingly-nervous boy that nothing in this lab could harm a human. So Danny was perfectly safe even if Jack, say, pointed a bazooka right at his face. Last time, Danny barely escaped the invention his father had called the Fenton Ghost Master.

The device was small, gun-like, designed to zap a ghost and cause it to melt from the bottom up. Fortunately, Danny's panicked cries brought Jazz down from the kitchen; she was able to cut the demonstration short with some half-baked excuse about a psychology interview he needed to be conducting. Never mind she was the one taking psychology and Danny couldn't be persuaded to even listen to her brief introductory crash course.

It had been a very close call. His parents hadn't yet figured out why there was a trail of his footprints in melted rubber leading up the basement stairs. It must have been the same oblivious tendencies that kept them from knowing he was half-ghost. It wasn't like he left clues everywhere.

They even knew about the portal accident! Granted, they thought he'd been _outside_ the portal when it turned on (because that was the story he fed them) but they were either ignorant of his power-related incidents in the months following, or they'd figured it was all normal after-effects from the exposure.

Other things had changed, though, not all of it so easy to explain away. His grades plummeted for seemingly no reason, even though he was a good student and adamant about getting into the NASA program. He was also much more aloof than before—even though they found ways of escaping with the craziness of being associated with the Fentons—he and Jazz had never been the rebellious teen types.

His fatigue when he didn't break his curfew and apologetic attitude when he did should have raised _some _flags. The scrapes, the cuts, the bruises, they couldn't always be covered up. They should have alerted his parents that something serious was going on.

And when every scanner and invention picked up his ecto-signature, you'd have thought they'd at least _question_ it! Multiple PhDs, articles in the most prestigious paranormal journals, and they couldn't find the ghost living in the upstairs bedroom. Not even considering Fenton and Phantom looked _exactly_ alike (save for the white hair and green eyes). They must have had every known picture of Phantom on file, but still nothing.

"Danny!" Jack yelled again, even louder. "Come down here, I want to show you something!" Danny closed his eyes, hoping that not answering would cause his dad to forget about him in his excitement. It had happened before.

Of course, he'd still get a lecture after dinner, but at least then he'd be able to get out of it with an excuse about having a lot of homework. Jazz was out for the afternoon, so she wouldn't be able to cover for him if his dad dragged him down to the lab.

Then he heard the heavy footsteps bouncing up the stairs and he knew that excuse wouldn't work this time. There was no way his dad would leave without dragging him to the basement. He considered turning invisible, but what if his dad had brought the invention upstairs and it picked up his signature? He sat up on his bed, frozen, as his dad burst in with an expression like a kid in a candy store.

"There you are, Danny-boy! Come with me to the lab and see my new weapon!" Jack grabbed his son's wrist and started pulling him into the hallway and downstairs, still talking. "It's my greatest one yet! Phantom will regret showing his putrid protoplasmic face around here next time we see him!" Jack didn't notice, once again, that Danny had paled at the comment.

At least they weren't still calling him "Inviso-Bill," but it didn't do him much good if he was blasted to bits, did it? He tried desperately to get his dad to let him leave, "Uh, dad, I really have a lot of homework I need to do and—"

"Nonsense, Danny! Your math homework can wait!

"But you told me to pull my grades up and I have a test tomorrow…"

"This will be both scientific and educational!"

"But I broke a test tube yesterday and mom said she didn't want me back in the lab…"

"She'll get over it! Besides, you won't even have to touch anything."

"But Da—" it was too late; Danny was in the lab at his father's mercy. Jack practically bounced over to his work table, completely ignoring the effects of the earlier blast that had caused Danny to give up studying. Danny walked around broken beakers and fallen pieces of the ceiling; wary of exposed wires or a contraption that could still work on him.

When he reached his table, Jack heaved a large something that looked suspiciously to Danny like a Fenton Bazooka and turned around, pointing it towards his son. Danny instinctively ducked behind the table next to him arms over his head.

Jack was confused, "Danny?" The boy was right behind him a minute ago and now he'd disappeared like a ghost.

"I'm…I'm over here," Danny cautiously lifted his head up above the tabletop until his nose poked over the edge. He tilted his head; the bazooka looked more like a picture frame now that he actually looked at it. "Is that what you wanted to show me, dad?"

"Oh no, this is your mother's project. She wanted a new frame for the hall mirror," his dad explained.

"I needed to move it while I put some finishing touches on the mirror itself so I put it on your father's table since he wasn't using it."

"Right! But now I'm back and I'm going to show you the Fenton Ghost Rester!" Jack set the mirror frame against the wall and dug around his mess of a table for his own small device.

"So," Danny questioned, still wary but coming closer, "that's just a mirror frame?"

"Yes, Danny," his mother said as she picked it up from where Jack had laid it and got to work attaching it to the mirror. Jack was having difficulty finding his invention and the more he rooted through the bits of wire and other parts, the more tangled the mess became.

"And that's just a mirror?"

"Well, what else would it be?" She looked at him oddly for a moment and he sighed in relief before she continued, "Of course, I made some minor adjustments to it since it was here anyway." She finished fitting the frame and fastened the screws.

Danny was going to ask what sort of "minor adjustments" she'd made that might just kill him—or finish the job, he supposed—when his father let out a loud cry of triumph.

"AH-HAH!" he yelled, causing Danny to jump and Maddie to drop her mirror. She caught it in the nick of time, warning her husband to be more careful. "Here it is! The Fenton Ghost Rester!" Jack held up a small device that looked suspiciously like last week's Fenton Ghost Master. The colors were inverted and there may have been an extra knob, but otherwise it seemed as if it would be just as nasty as its counterpart.

Danny wasn't willing to take the chance that the invention would work and Jazz was nowhere to come to his rescue. What if that thing started melting him from the top down instead of the bottom up? He involuntarily touched his hair to make sure it was still there before making a quick escape, "I really have to get back to my homework; see you at dinner!"

He was halfway up the stairs when his mother let out a loud gasp, "Danny?" her voice was full of worry. Something was definitely wrong. Did a ghost come through the portal? Was another invention about to blow up? He clenched his fists and braced himself, turning to meet whatever was awaiting him.

He hadn't expected this.

He could handle any ghost stupid enough to fly through the Fenton Portal while the hunters were working. He could even handle his dad's explosive inventions, but he wasn't ready for this.

He looked at his mother first, following her worried gaze to the mirror in her hands. She hadn't put it back on the table after saving it from crashing to the floor. She'd caught it at an odd angle and the floor-length mirror extended down in front of her to nearly touch the ground.

His father looked there too, gasped, dropped his beloved new invention in shock, "Danny?" It was a tentative question laced with worry and even…fear? Danny felt the world slow around him, he couldn't move. His gaze moved to his reflection in the mirror and the green eyes staring back at him.

"Danny?!" the boy's mother wondered in awe, confusion, and fear.

"Yes, Mom?" Danny chuckled nervously.

Maddie merely leaned the mirror in her hands against the wall, pointed to her son's reflection, and demanded, "Explain this."

"Funny story…"

"Danny."

Danny felt backed into a corner (thankfully not literally); should he tell them? Get it over with? Stop the lying?

But what if they hated him?

Shot him?

_Dissected him?_

"Pro—" Danny swallowed, "Promise you won't hurt me?"

His parents nodded their consent.

"No guns?"

They nodded again.

"No dissection?"

And again.

"You'll listen to everything I have to say no matter what?"

More nodding.

"Alright, then I'll tell you the truth," Danny said weakly, "but could we go upstairs first?" His parents once again nodded and the family walked out of their basement lab and into the kitchen.

They sat down at the table and Jack finally spoke, "What's this about, Danny?"

"Oh, where to start?" Danny wondered. "Well, you know the portal accident?"

"What about it?" Maddie asked.

"I wasn't…completely honest with you before. Yes, I turned it on accidentally, but I wasn't—" he found this harder to say than he'd expected. "I wasn't…_outside_ the portal when it started up."

His mother gasped, "You were inside it? You could've died! What were you thinking?!"

"I know I shouldn't have gone in, or at least I should have unplugged it first, but I didn't expect there to be an 'on' button _inside _the thing!"

"So that's why it didn't work…" Jack muttered. "But what happened to you, Danny?"

"Well, the other ghosts call me a 'halfa,' half a boy, half a ghost. Somehow the portal infused ectoplasm into my DNA or something," he shrugged. "I don't understand it, but the point is: I'm half-ghost. And I'm Danny Phantom."

"You're—"

"But—"

"How—"

His parents were stumbling over each other and their own words. Until Maddie realized something, "We _hunted _you. We hunted our own _son!"_

"Mom! It's fine. Really, it is. You never really hurt me anyway."

"But Danny—" Maddie started. "Oh, Danny, can you ever forgive us?"

"There's nothing to forgive," Danny replied honestly. "Can you forgive me for lying to you all this time?"

"We never gave you a reason not to," Jack told him. "Always on about destroying ghosts, I wouldn't tell us either if I were you!"

"So you're really fine with this?" Danny asked hopefully.

"It's a bit…strange," Maddie confessed, then smiled, "but I'll get used to it."

"Awesome!" Danny exclaimed. He felt like a humungous weight had been lifted from his shoulders, "You have no idea how much I've worried about telling you. By the way, Mom, what was that mirror anyway?"

"Oh, it was supposed to show the true form of any ghost reflected in it and show invisible ghosts."

"Suppose it works," Danny said. "I wonder if it'd show my human form if I was in ghost form?"

"We should test it out!" Jack exclaimed, dragging his son, for the second time that day, down to the basement. He let go of Danny and held the mirror in front of him excitedly. Danny laughed at his father's child-like excitement and transformed.

The looks of awe on his parents' faces made him laugh again. The transformation was so foreign to them, they couldn't help but stare. Danny turned his attention to the mirror, which did in fact show his human form, "This is too weird!" He transformed back, marveling as the reflection switched to Phantom again.

_Slam!_

They heard the door close, signaling Jazz's return. "Hey, want to play a trick on Jazz?" Danny asked with a gleam in his eye.

-o-

"Mom? Dad? Danny?" Jazz called through the house.

"In the lab!" Jack called back. His daughter came down the stairs quickly, worried about Danny being in the lab with their parents. She gasped when she reached the bottom—they couldn't—they wouldn't!

Danny lay seemingly unconscious on an examination table while Jack held a scalpel in his hands, cleaning it, looking for all the world like he was about to dissect the ghost on the table.

"Dad!" Jazz yelled, "What do you think you're doing?!" She ran to Danny and started to take his restraints off, "Danny?" she patted his cheek, "wake up, Danny!"

"Jazz what are you doing?" Maddie questioned her daughter.

Jazz turned from her brother, fury in her eyes, "What are _you _doing?! Do you have _any idea—_" She was cut off when Danny suddenly appeared behind his mother, putting a finger to his lips to shush his sister.

Maddie quickly turned around, grabbed Danny, and tied him up with some line from the Fenton Fisher, "Don't think you can get away, ghost!" Jazz was growing increasingly worried for her brother's life (half-life?). She dreaded what her mother was going to do or say next. "You have homework to finish!"

Wait, what?

"Uh, Mom?" Jazz was horribly confused.

"Yes, dear?" Maddie asked sweetly.

"What are you doing?"

"Forcing your brother to do his homework," she replied nonchalantly.

"But Danny's not—Phantom's—" Jazz was even more confused than before until her family couldn't take it anymore and burst out laughing. When they could breathe again, Maddie untied Danny and he transformed back into Fenton.

"Sorry, Jazz," her mother said sincerely, "It was Danny's idea."

"Hey!" Danny said incredulously, "Just because it was, doesn't mean you have to tell her!" Jazz couldn't have been more perplexed than at that moment.

"They know?" she asked her brother.

"Yep. Actually, they found out right before you came home thanks to that," he pointed to the mirror leaning against the wall showing his Phantom persona, "stupid thing."

"Just one more question," Jazz started, Danny raised an eyebrow, _"What in the world possessed you to do such a thing to me?!"_

Danny chuckled, "Check the date lately? I couldn't help myself!" Jazz realized it was April first. She hit her brother upside the head anyway.

"Ow!" Danny rubbed his head.

"But seriously, Danny," his mother said sternly, "homework."

"Moooom!" he groaned.

"No buts!"

_"Fine," _he conceded. "I'll go do my homework."

"But what about scientific discovery?!" Jack asked loudly.

"We've all had quite enough for one day, I think," Maddie answered with finality. Jack pouted, but suddenly he had an idea.

"Danny, before you go, could I get a sample of your ecto-signature?"

"Why…?" Danny asked warily.

"So I can work out a way to program our inventions to not target you!" he said gleefully.

"Really?!" Danny was even more excited than his father, and gladly let him take the sample he needed. After he'd finished, Danny said, "I should go do that homework now…"

"That's fine," Jack said, absorbed in his work.

Danny smiled, having one thing left to say before floating up into the ceiling (the easy way to his room), "Mom, Dad?" they looked up.

"Thanks."


End file.
